It all happened in France. I certainly never aspired to be an internet psychic. You could even say it would be the last thing on my mind. I'm an honest person and don't consider such professions to be populated by honest and trustworthy people! I'm hoping not to offend anyone, but wouldn't you have to admit that this profession is mostly practiced by charlatans?! Anyway, there I was in France, and slowly running out of money. I met another American, Cindy, who was a computer training consultant AND a promotor for a crazy circus out of London. Well, out of boredom and desperation to be 'useful,' I decided to help the circus sell tickets (as a volunteer) and got to know Cindy better. Well, she told me that one of her computer students was looking for people who spoke fluent English and had access to a computer and email to work for an astrology web site. Well, astrology isn't my thing, but I thought, well, why not try it out, as I am an email addict, so what better way to make a living than answering emails?! I told Cindy that I'd like to meet with them and arranged to meet with someone about it the following week. Well this meeting was conducted in French and the woman I met spoke really, really fast and I understood about 50 percent of what she said (my French did greatly improve later on, I'm happy to say). So I just nodded my head and smiled and said, 'oui, oui.' I told her that I didn't know that much about astrology and all that, but she said that was irrelevant, they'd tell me what to write. At the end, she gave me a url to check out. I looked at the web site and it was indeed an astrology website, AND I found out what I would be doing (something I'd missed in the meeting) - I would be answering the questions that people were supposedly asking a psychic. So she sent me some emails to give me an idea of how to answer the questions and what kind of questions people asked. It all seemed very dishonest, but out of need for some employement I decided to try it out. At first I answered overflow questions pointed towards various 'psychics' shown on the website, but a bit later they asked me if I would like my own personna. Well, after some hestitation I agreed, and chose a 'psychic' name for myself (my own being rather boring, and certainly I wouldn't want anyone to really know who I was!) and used the photo on this page (rather appropriate and 'mystical' for this type of thing). People paid to ask me questions and I got 20% of the total cost of each question I answered. Mostly I could cut and paste things to answer the questions, but if people gave me enough information (which they usually didn't since they assumed I was an all-knowing and all-powerful mystic), I would try and logically answer the questions to the best of my ability. To promote myself, I offered free dream analysis, which was very popular, being free and all. Of course, people always want things for free! I actually preferred the dream analysis as it was more interesting and I could provide a 'real' analysis (or at least my own analysis of the dream). Unfortunately this was very high volume and not paid! The web site did not think that people would be willing to pay for dream analysis. Funny, people will pay an internet psychic, but not for dream analysis. I felt much more comfortable with the dream analysis as this seems more honest and straightforward and, well, 'real.' But I had to stop with this as the volume was too high to be doing it for free, and I discovered that out of 300 dream interpreations, only one person went on to pay for a question to the psychic. So instead they promoted me in the horoscopes they distributed through the web site.

Most people asked various questions about love, i.e., will my boyfriend/husband come back to me, will I meet someone to fall in love with, should I stay with my current girlfriend....the second most popular questions concerned career and the third money. The people seemed to like my responses, I got some new agey books and told everyone to meditate to feel better. It seemed to work for them. The idea was to get the people to sign up as a yearly member and have their own personal psychic, so this was promoted at the end of answering every question. Most of the people liked my answers and one woman stated that I was best psychic she ever had (boy, did I laugh about that). But it did make me feel good when the people were happy with my responses. With the people on the yearly plan, it became more like I was their psychologist rather than their psychic. The whole thing still made me uncomfortable and trying to help people psychologically over email was much more preferrable than playing at being a psychic. I felt rather guilty as I felt I was deceiving people. I tried to rationalize it by thinking, well, they're dumb enough to believe in internet psychics, so I'm just giving them what they want. But still, it irked me, and finally it became too much and I quit. But I did do it for four months and I did get a kick out of telling people what I did. Some people would then ask me to tell their fortunes! So, after being a relunctant internet psychic, I at least hope that I helped some people with their dreams and as an internet psychologist, since my psychic abilities are 'nil.' But from the feedback I received, I would say I gave those people more for their money than most other internet psychics.

One long-time joke that I laughed about for so long with Cindy, who, although did not answer questions as a psychic, worked with this company for a bit, translating and making banners and such things....was the incident of "I am not a man!." Apparently a woman had received a clairvoyant reading through the web site and everything was just fine in the emailed response until she got to a part where it said "You were once a man....." Well, she was quite upset that her reading, which she apparently so fervently believed was true and real, referred to her as a man. Her email was quite amusing in that she stated how her reading was right on the mark for her personality, but that there was just one little problem...that SHE WAS NOT A MAN! I was asked to explain to her that it was a typographical error and that we did indeed know that she was in fact a woman. In reality, there were two different clairvoyant readings sent to everyone: one for men and one for women. She was just sent the wrong one! The amazing thing is that she accepted my email as a good explanation for the mistake.

Before I quit, they asked me if I'd like to write monthly horoscopes. This consisted of making them up or copying them from any other source. Ever wonder where those horoscopes come from that you see everywhere?? Does it really make you wonder who is writing these things?

September 2000 Kristin Piljay
Photo of me by Byron Miller